Pete Wilson ...revisited

Re: Joe Guzzardiâ€™s Blog:After All These Years, Reconquistas Still Mad At Pete Wilson

If Mexican revanchists could think clearly they would understand that they should be setting up monuments in honor of Pete Wilson throughout Mexico's fast emptying rural villages.

And if Californians could reflect on what Wilsonâ€™s role really was in immigration policy, they would run him out of town and damn him for the damage that he has done their state and to America.

No manâ€”not even George Bush or Ted Kennedy---has done more than Wilson to deliver America into the hands of Mexico. No American politician failed so miserably in his duty to protect American interests.

Wilsonâ€™s endorsement of Proposition 187 was too little too late to lessen the damage that he caused by his manipulation, at the very last minute, on behalf of California growers, of the 1986 IRCA act.

It is not widely noted, but true nonetheless, that at the 11th hour of negotiations, Wilson introduced a program known as the Special Agricultural Workers (S.A.W.) provision that allowed anyone who could demonstrate that he worked 90 days in agriculture during any of the previous two years to qualify for amnesty.

The burden was on the U.S. government to disprove an applicantâ€™s claim. This was an open invitation to fraud. Whereas it was initially assumed that 300,000 people would qualify for the 1986 amnesty, after Wilsonâ€™s intervention close to 4,000,000 people were amnestied.

Well into the late 1990's petitioners were still making claims that they were unfairly denied amnesty under the 1986 law. For all I know there may still be ongoing litigation over this travesty.

It was at this moment when immigration completely spun out of control. Word spread like wildfire all over South America of agentsâ€”for a few hundred bucksâ€”who would create a package for a petitioner and apply for the amnesty.

Those amnestied encouraged millions more to follow. Aliens sensedâ€”correctlyâ€”that America would never enforce immigration law vigorously.

La Raza, LULAC and other Mexican malcontents are Wilsonâ€™s people. He invited them in. Wilson was used the same pandering language to describe Mexican migrants in 1986 that Bush used during the past yearâ€¦.â€